[PJ] In the current issue of Commentary my friend Rabbi Meir Soloveichik discusses J.R.R. Tolkien's fascination with the Jews, who are of course the Dwarves in the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, as Tolkien himself stated in a 1971 BBC interview. Tolkien was no anti-Semite (not, at least, according to the canonical definition, namely someone who hates the Jews more than is absolutely necessary). His views in The Hobbit were typical of the philo-Semites of the 1930s: the Jews/Dwarves are "calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots; some are not, but are decent enough people...if you don’t expect too much."
In The Lord of the Rings, completed after the Holocaust, Tolkien turned more sympathetic, depicting a great Elf-Dwarf friendship, and presaging (as Rabbi Soloveichik points out) a Jewish-Christian alliance against the forces of evil. One might add that in The Silmarillion, Tolkien's early (but posthumously published) compendium of Middle-Earth mythology, the Dwarves were created before the Elves, just as the Jews came before the Christians--but by mistake, in Tolkien's account.
In the Dwarves' quest for their ancient homeland in the Lonely Mountain, Rabbi Soloveichik observes, Tolkien evinces a certain sympathy for Zionism.
#5
I always thought the battle of Helm's Deep was The Great Siege of Malta, with the cavalry relief mirroring Vinceno Anastagi's raid of the Turkish camp while Veletta's troops were in dire straits, tricking the Turks into thinking a Spanish relief force had landed, panicking the troops, and relieving the siege.
I read a great argument that Helm's Deep was really Jan Sobieski and the winged hussars making an improbable march and nailing the Turkish troops sieging Vienna.
On reflection, I think the latter best fits Helm's Deep, as the Siege of Malta continues for quite a bit after Anastagi's raid, but Sobieski's charge breaks the Turks into a wild retreat ending the Siege of Vienna that day.
h/t Instapundit
It was international free trade--the free and open trade of political favors. I’m referring to the live from Mexico City two-man television talk show and press conference co-hosted by U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.
The Trump-Pena trade show coincided with the 271st day of an American domestic no-show. 271 is (by one count) the number of days that had passed since Hillary Clinton’s last stand up, unscripted press conference.
As I write this column, the usual menagerie of mainstream media are struggling to interpret the verbally unscripted Trump-Pena trade show. Get a clue: the trade show’s thoroughly scripted video imagery dominates the words. Mainstream media in their respective countries portrayed Trump and Pena as inevitable antagonists. Think of that as a Campaign 2016 mainstream media narrative truth.
To the deep dismay of mainstream spinsters on both sides of the Rio Grande, the nattily-dressed Pena and sartorially-appropriate Trump smiled, remained calm, and treated each other with respectful dignity. In fact, they were rather darn friendly--tough guy friendly. Though they held the show on Enrique’s home turf, Donald more or less emceed (with interpreters), which seemed to work for both men. Did we witness open diplomacy? I think so--a rare example of authentic open diplomacy, where both men win. Dare we call it Art Of The Deal?
[Townhall] FOLLOWING Donald J. Trump's sublime immigration address, critics--essentially all Big, Crooked Media--charged that Trump's Arizona speech represented a sharp departure from the tone he took earlier that day, with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. A reversal, if you will.
Nonsense. With President Nieto, Donald Trump was at once patriotic, forceful and diplomatic.
In close to two decades of analyzing American politics, I've yet to hear an American leader address his Mexican counterpart as forcefully as Mr. Trump addressed President Nieto. Trump came across as a man-of-the world, to whom interfacing with foreign dignitaries was second nature.
It's always been the case that Americans in power collude with Mexicans in power to bully and manipulate a powerless American People into accepting the unacceptable: The imperative to welcome torrents of unskilled illegal aliens, at an incalculable cost to the safety of America's communities, the solvency of its public institutions, and the sustainability of the environment.
Strolling through the ancient Mayan and Toltec ruins with President Vincente Fox, in 2006, George W. Bush was not talking-up American interests. He was plotting amnesty with an unholy trinity comprised of John McCain, Ted Kennedy and Arlen Specter. Sly Fox was the silent partner.
Most memorably, Bush, who would wrestle a crocodile for a criminal alien, went on to indict and viciously prosecute two brave border-patrol agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. For shooting a drug dealer in the derriere--in the process of defending their countrymen--Bush unleashed his bloodhound, U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, on the two patrolmen and jailed them.
Some profound silliness on the part of Wapo. Researchers have known for decades that women tend to beat men on environmental metrics. They generally use less fuel and energy. They eat less meat. They're more concerned about climate change. They're easier to fool, in other words. They're smaller, more compact when young, better built (hubba hubba!), eat differently and smell different.
James Wilkie, a business professor at the University of Notre Dame, wanted to understand what drives this gender eco-friendliness gap. After years of exploring psychological bias, he and his colleagues developed a theory. How's this: Men are designed for more physical activities. They're larger in build, stronger as a group, and fleeter of foot. All this overlaps in a kind of gender Venn diagram that's not closer to a perfect circle. As they grow older, men tend to become meaner and less group-oriented, not quite silverbacks but I think definitely a leftover -- and again, think Venn, not universal. Women tend to become softer, more comforting.
"Men’s resistance may stem in part from a prevalent association between the concepts of greenness and femininity and a corresponding stereotype (held by both men and women) that green consumers are feminine," they assert this month in the Journal of Consumer Research. "As a result of this stereotype, men may be motivated to avoid or even oppose green behaviors in order to safeguard their gender identity." Silly researchers. They misspelled personal sanity. So it has everything to do with gender stereotypes and nothing to do with several million years of evolution and adaptation and cognate behavior in animals from the same evolutionary background can be discounted? Scientific method at work is a wonderful thing.
The researchers conducted a set of experiments, each designed to gauge if we actually do ascribe gender to green products and whether such perceptions impact our willingness to use them. They found people consistently connect environmentally conscious goods to their idea of femininity.
The first survey of 127 college students asked respondents if they thought green products appeared masculine, feminine or neither. Most participants, both men and women, said items designed to protect the planet seemed feminine. As mentioned above, there's a reason for that. Wimminzez are more pliant, easier to fool.
Another group of 194 students took an online quiz instructing them to imagine two grocery store shoppers, one carrying a green reusable bag and another toting a plastic sack. The quiz asked: Which seemed more eco-friendly, wasteful, masculine and/or feminine? The green shoppers seemed to respondents more eco-friendly and feminine, regardless of their gender. The plastic shoppers came off as more wasteful and masculine. Pretty funny. At the grocery store I shop at (years and years ago, BTW), tote bags and paper bags became the latest Green rage, and then subsequently store policy. Then a genius marketeer came up with the idea of allowing plastic bags in the self serve line. Everyone else got paper bags. Now you can ask for plastic, and I do so, loudly. The observable point is that even though they still do offer paper bagging, plastic bags for all their characterization of being not environmentally friendly went down the sh*tter, along with the motivation.
The researchers next gave a group of men phony gift cards and told them to pick from a selection of batteries, which included a green option. In both a faux Walmart and an online shopping scenario, the men avoided the green choice. “Self-perceptions of femininity suggest that threats may also influence private behavior,” the authors wrote. Given the choice I would have not purchased the green battery, mainly because green products are known to be unreliable, having yet to live up to their hype and their perception of value. Honest, I didn't check my man card. It was straight up economics. I suspect you take a woman out on her own with a coupla babies riding around with her in the grocery store, she'll be looking at her household budget, not checking her woman card, whatever that is. She'll buy whatever has the best value, not what "saves the planet."
Wilkie’s team also found men in the studies were more likely to donate to an environmental nonprofit group that had a “masculine” logo — one with darker colors and bold fonts — than to an organization that displayed lighter tones and “frilly” letters. Logos didn’t have an impact on where women said they’d want to donate.
A similar trend emerged in an experiment at a BMW dealership. When presented with two versions of the same “green” car, men favored the one called the “Protection Model” over the “Eco-friendly Model.” Women, meanwhile, weren’t particularly swayed by either title. One look at the price of those driving machines would have been enough for me to look elsewhere. "Okay, cool. Can we see some pickup trucks, now?"
A woman in the market for a BMW either wants a fun driving car because she likes to drive aggressively, or she wants an expensive piece of vehicular jewelry. Neither is enhanced by being labelled either Eco or Protection.
“Stereotypical feminine behavior and attitudes are more in parallel with taking care of the environment,” Wilkie said of the findings. “Male traits tend to conflict with this idea of maintaining a nice environment for other people.”
Professor Wilkie is a bigot who has never observed suburban men mowing the lawn. When I mow the lawn, I take out the lawn mower, go round and round until the grass is mostly about the same shorter height, then put the mower back in the garage. When Mr. Wife mows the lawn, he edges before with one machine I don't touch, then after mowing he blows all the clippings off the driveway and sidewalk with another machine I don't touch. And if there is a chance that the clippings will clump instead of falling neatly between the standing grass blades, he uses the bagger and takes the captured clippings to the mulch pile in the back to break down into mulch. One of us cares a great deal more than the other.
Wilkie blames stereotypes. People who care about the environment are perceived as nurturing, gentle caretakers. Pop culture says they're barefoot hippies with long hair and flower crowns. That image clashes with traditional masculinity. Ya think?
Previous research, Wilkie noted, suggests that men are socially penalized more for breaking gender norms when it comes to the products they use — or even the drinks they order. “If a man at a bar were to order a girlie drink, he might get some looks,” Wilkie said. “He might get some snickers. He might even get into a fight.” Just what is a girlie drink? Help a fella out here?
A woman requesting something that reads masculine, such as, say, a whiskey on the rocks, probably wouldn’t encounter that problem. “Some people might even be impressed,” he said. None of that seems to be surprising. Men are more likely to have trouble admitting having same gender sex, for example, than wimminzez.
Carrie Preston, director of the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Program at Boston University, said it’s concerning that feminine-seeming goods or actions repel some men. “That says what’s feminine is bad, is lesser, is second class,” she said. “Although men’s and women’s roles have changed significantly, masculinity hasn’t changed as much.” And it's not likely to.
Caring about what people think of your drink choice or grocery bag may seem silly. There’s nothing inherently feminine about recycling, and some would argue that femininity itself (and how it’s marketed) is a cultural creation. Still, a 2011 survey from the global marketing firm Ogilvy and Mather found 82 percent of adults in a nationally representative sample said “going green” is more ladylike than manly. I woulda hung up the phone on that question.
Marketers are unlikely to shatter gender expectations overnight — or nix the belief that feminine is lesser — but a packaging or messaging tweak could draw more men to the green movement. Or to a bowel movement.
"Despite a prevalent stereotype that green consumers are more feminine than non-green consumers," the researchers wrote, "we show that men’s inhibitions about engaging in green behavior can be mitigated through masculine affirmation and masculine branding." That's if you're brain dead.
#2
"Old Yellow was ladylike lemon..."
"And Red, in its manly persimmon!"
"So why did they ban it?"
"We're saving the planet
with Green, the new Soylent for women!"
No kidding. Dunno why I don't read him more often (nuff inferiority complex already?). Cuz when I do, I wonder, life being so short, why I'd read anything else. Thanks, man. Didn't post this the other day (cuz it sucked, and I like valentour), but what the hell...
A painful dilemma. No, crippling.
Brass blasting and church bells a-rippling.
I'm standing, stunned, blinking:
"What's wrong, dude?" "I'm thinking."
To choose between godhead and Kipling?
#4
Maybe because women are at the top end of the food chain while men are the ones most likely to die while on the dirty jobs that keep the chain operational. Men get to see 'nature' up close and personal in a manner the vast majority of women seek to avoid.
#7
Here's an executive summary: green is for chicks and sissies. Now where's my stipend ?
Posted by: Regular joe ||
09/02/2016 13:46 Comments ||
Top||
#8
Discarded birth control and hygiene products cause a great deal of damage to the environment.
And laundry detergent, and Bounce sheets, and makeup and all the industrial waste from the production of smart phones, and other modern conveniences which disproportionately benefit women -- oh, and socialism, which tends to be more popular with women.
When oh when will the ladies "lady up" and give up all those icky modern contrivances?
#9
I kicked the Earth's ass today with a shovel, then flayed a sunflower. I will celebrate my victory with a whiskey and change the best non-green battery to the laserlyte so I can impale the Earth with lead tomorrow then pour a girlie drink into its open wound. Then maybe some fireworks.
#6
Is there is a "Syria" other than a Caliphate of Damascus and its tributary possessions surrounded by the vicious Turkish scum to the North, the Bedouin rabble to the South, and the abominable Persians to the East?
#7
Reading the author's snarky comments about animal-themed mercenaries is priceless if you have any knowledge of the history of warfare in the region -- particularly how the Byzantines built their army. Local militia, of doubtful loyalty, to hold ground and mobile field armies to do the real fighting...
#9
Putin is likely to regret his Syrian adventure as much as we have regretted some of ours. I'd be perfectly willing to sit back and watch it from the safety of my couch.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
09/02/2016 11:33 Comments ||
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#10
Wish him well. Stay the fok out and let the sand kaffr's fight it out.
h/t Instapundit
After shaking my head about it, I had to respond in some fashion. These people are stupid and cowardly, but in a bizarrely self-destructive way. They invert all priorities. If you were to say "who is a greater threat to LGBT folks on campus" and ask them to compare random Americans who may or may not carry next to pro-Sharia refugees from Syria they would surely select the first group as the greater threat. Why, even speaking about the second would be terribly wrong and bigoted.
And you sit there, and ponder it awhile, wondering what sort of mental disease could be responsible for this peculiar brand of doublethink. I’m starting to call it "Anti-Think". It’s like thinking, except in the exact opposing direction. It contains all the mechanisms of thinking, but reaches a destination in equal magnitude away from sense. If zero were to be not-Think, and 1 were to be Think, then Anti-Think would be -1. Anti-Think results in an objectively worse conclusion than not thinking at all.
...Someday, historians will look back at our age and wonder what kind of magical propaganda was created that an entire generation of people could be educated in how to make decisions in direct opposition of all sense, evidence, and reason. It will be seen as the greatest historical coup of all time.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
